I don't know if it is sufficient to pile up bright minds and set them loose. But there are several historic examples, beginning with the Greek mathematicians and philosophers, who didn't work in isolation, but were teachers of remarkable students. Much later, the allies summoned a crowd of code breakers in Bletchley Park

Not to mention a crowd of bomb makers in Los Alamos.

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and those people created the general purpose computer. In modern times, you have Xerox PARC and IBM's T J Watson Research Center.

...the end goal is producing interesting Fractal Art in an optimum way rather than deriving new "correct" mathematical techniques.This of course is also a weakness but I think does leave things more open to possibilities than more formal academic investigations More formal investigation can then be done of ideas that merit such.

Quite right David, and this is the way to go for mayor breakthroughs, often this way of not following conventions leads to the most interesting (and in the end, in this case, it might end up “correct” mathematically) results.

The thing I find most remarkable about FractalForums is how a new class of fractal formulas seems to be discovered every month. ........... Much of FractalForums' appeal is created by outstanding individuals. But the remarkable thing is how many of them have gathered here and are working together (or are competing :-) to refine, improve, explore, produce fractal imagery. ....... people are not being organized and directed, but they are let loose.

We make astonishing discoveries because we are free to go where we want, and we do not have to keep secrets from each other.

I agree with the majority of what you have stated. But there ARE a few secrets being kept. This can not be helped, given the environment that some of the Members have come from. It was ingrained into them prior to joining Fractal Forums, and it is now a bad habit for them to break.

And yes, the freedom to go in many directions, using many software applications, is the most influential part of this Forum !!!

Those were a bit too goal oriented as an example. I mean, the theory was already there, fission, chain reaction, amount of energy released. They "merely" had to work out the practical details of handling and processing the material, and how to put it together into a weapon usable by non-experts.

So they weren't really free to come up with something unexpected (other than plain failure).

Those were a bit too goal oriented as an example. I mean, the theory was already there, fission, chain reaction, amount of energy released. They "merely" had to work out the practical details of handling and processing the material, and how to put it together into a weapon usable by non-experts.

So they weren't really free to come up with something unexpected (other than plain failure).

Depends what you wanted an example of. Keep in mind also that though there was one goal-end-product there those physicists forged lasting relationships and went on to produce important results in quantum theory.